


The Always and Never King

by Lang (orphan_account)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, Intersex, M/M, Rape, Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:07:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King and Sorcerer in a broken lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Always and Never King

**Author's Note:**

> Written ages and ages and ages ago to satisfy my then-need for idficcy intersex slavefic. Therefore takes into account maybe 10% of the existing canon.

There were enough of the old superstitions left for even the king to take pause. Killing a sorcerer was one thing, but to harm a creature like this was unthinkable, sure to kill crops and dry up every well in the kingdom. Uther recoiled momentarily in disgust before setting his mouth in a thin line, expression carefully blank.

Arthur thought, then, that his father would give the order.

Instead, Uther called for Sir Clodran, whose taunting, bullying nature had caused him to rip the rags from a condemned man for the sheer malice of it, and bade him to check between the sorcerer’s legs.

“It is a trick,” the king spat. “An illusion. There is nothing a magic-user won’t do to save his skin.”

Clodran used the hilt of his sword – unnecessary, Arthur thought, and cruel besides – while two other men held the sorcerer’s legs apart. He forced it into the folds hidden behind the flaccid cock, until the hand-guard met dense black hair. The creature shrieked in pain, and the pommel came away dripping blood.

“It went in easily enough,” Clodran said. “He’s real.”

Uther’s advisors checked the collar at the creature’s throat, and hemmed about the prospect of escape. Guards were sent to the treasury and returned with four heavy cuffs, each marked with sigils, barriers against magic. The creature’s wrists and ankles were secured. Uther still appeared displeased.

The men seized the creature’s trembling throat and arms, and he – _it –_ was forced to kneel and face the throne. Arthur could see the face more clearly now. It was still, by all accounts, mostly male, but perhaps Arthur could read a delicacy in the sorcerer’s bones that true men did not possess.  Sweat beaded off the pale brow and ran down sharp cheekbones. It blinked twice, but there did not seem to be tears. Usually there were tears at the moment of verdict.

“To safeguard the prosperity of the kingdom,” Uther said, “We will modify the original sentence from death to a lifetime of imprisonment within the walls of the castle.” The king looked down, lip curled in distaste. “Furthermore, as the sorceror’s unnatural form mirrors its treasonous inclinations, we decree that it is to be on display at all times, as proof of the monstrous nature within each magic-user.”

The king sat back, pleased. The court, too, was relieved. Arthur swallowed, and ignored the faint twinges at the back of his mind. This was less dangerous than incurring the wrath of some ancient god and, coming from Uther, it was a rare bit of mercy.

The creature stared at the fine crimson banners behind the throne, eyes unfocused, until the guards dragged it away.

\--

Not an hour later, Lady Belarine’s manservant spilled wine on her furs. Uther considered and approved her request to remove the servant’s nails. He shrieked appallingly. Arthur rubbed at his temples, annoyed by the noise.

\--

No one wanted the creature to die, least of all the king, so it was brought inside each evening and chained to the foot of the throne. To leave it naked in the stocks as the nights grew colder would have been to kill it. Besides, indoors even the ladies could enjoy it. In the stocks, it was as easy for a gentlemen or passing knight to drop trousers and take it from behind as it was for the servants to hurl fruit at its face. It would have been unseemly, however, for a gentlewoman of the court to be seen fondling a criminal in broad daylight.

Lady Madoigne enjoyed forcing the servants to couple with it, and Lady Enna liked to see it crawl and lick her slippers. Lady Cilla instructed a servant to bring several fine glass perfume stoppers one day, and began a new fashion of seeing which objects the creature could take. This game continued for some time, and Arthur’s men enjoyed placing bets against the sorcerer’s favor. They usually lost. In its own way, Arthur supposed, so did the sorcerer.

Morgana did not look at it, and she did not permit her Guinevere to be used in Madoigne’s games. Arthur had thought she was disgusted with it, until he caught her slipping it crumbs beneath the banquet table late one night. Most of the revelers were by then too drunk to notice or care as the king’s ward gathered its face in her hands and wiped at the grime on its chin. She was fussier, more motherly, than Arthur had thought it possible for her to be. She instructed her maidservant to feed it water, and the creature lapped eagerly at Guinevere’s cupped hands, too weak to hold a goblet or even lift its head from Morgana’s knee.

Morgana’s eyes darkened with anger when she caught Arthur’s gaze. She was growing more distant with each day, and more quietly furious. Uther had begun to talk of a marriage, in the hopes that a proper firm hand could bring her in line, but Arthur doubted it would be so easy. He did not particularly want to see her go, in any case, though she rarely spoke to him anymore. She had appealed to him too many times, and he had failed her in each instance. The villagers who had harbored an enchantress could not be saved, not even the children, and neither could the elderly merchant whose only crime was to stray too close to Camelot’s borders while carrying a single book of magic in his caravan. Guinevere’s father had been the final straw.

Arthur, too, was changing. These things affected him less, he supposed, because he was getting stronger. It was natural to mature, to learn perspective, to forbid minor qualms and distractions from halting the inevitable fulfillment of his duties to Camelot. Uther was proud of him, most likely, or possibly he hadn’t noticed. Arthur could not find it in himself to care, which was just as well, as it would have been childish.

Still, Arthur felt the need to warn her. Sir Leon had offered the creature a blanket, once, and spent the next night with lighted candles tied to his fingers, slowly scalded by melting wax as the king looked on in satisfaction. Leon had healed quickly and betrayed no signs of suffering, but he was one of Arthur’s men and Arthur expected no less. Morgana was a lady, and Arthur had no wish to see such a punishment inflicted on a woman.

“Better to stay away from it,” Arthur said, catching her just outside her chambers. She never permitted him entrance anymore. “You don’t want to anger –“

“Who?” Morgana said. “Uther? Spare me the lecture, Arthur. No one’s more cowed by him than you are.”

That galled him a bit. “Look,” Arthur said, “I don’t torment the thing, but neither do I coddle it. Don’t be a silly little fool, for once.”

Morgana slapped him. “The _thing_ is a _person_ , Arthur. The thing has a name. Don’t talk to me again until you learn it.”

\--

Lord Acramore came down the corridor inebriated a few minutes later and trapped Guinevere in an alcove. Arthur pulled him off and shoved the girl in the direction of Morgana’s chambers.

“I believe this belongs to you,” he shouted, by now not entirely sober himself. “You’re welcome.”

Morgana opened her doors long enough to bring Guinevere inside and fling a chamber pot at his head.

\--

Arthur paused by the stocks the next day and nodded at Sir Mellurion to hurry up. Mellurion gave three more thrusts, then groaned in fulfillment and pulled up his trousers. He tried to catch Arthur’s eye, but Arthur merely nodded again and Mellurion shuffled away.

Arthur pulled the creature’s chin up. He felt vaguely ridiculous. The dark hair was long and matted and no doubt crawling with fleas, and the once-pale skin was burned after too many hours in the sun, red and peeling over the bridge of the nose. The creature had a wide, well-formed mouth, however, though its lips were cracked. Arthur guessed that this was a part of its deformity, some not-quite-maleness hidden in plain sight.

“Sorcerer,” Arthur said, “You will give me your name.”

The sorcerer coughed. “No.”

Arthur twisted its chin up further, angry. “I don’t think I heard you properly. I have come here to ask you your name. Do not deny me.”

The sorcerer looked at him, though it may have been an effort to keep from looking directly at the sun. It was a foolish offense, for a prisoner to gaze at a prince, but Arthur could only note that its eyes were blue. He could have sworn that when he had captured it (healing a man trampled by a maddened bull, in a village several days from Camelot) its eyes had been gold.

“Is that it? I thought you were going to use my mouth. The answer is still no.”

Arthur’s grip tightened. “Do you know who I am, sorcerer? Your name.”

The creature squinted at him. “That belongs to me. So the answer, _sire_ , is still no.”

Arthur dropped its head, and it didn’t bother to lift it back up, skull lolling senselessly as the creature chuckled. It was clearly mad, or just very stupid.

\--

What did it matter? Slaves and prisoners and traitors didn’t have names, and this creature was all three.

\--

But Arthur asked again that night, pulling Sir Dinall and Lady Ugeme away from the creature and bending down to whisper into one dirty ear.

“Tell me,” Arthur said, “And I’ll give you a night of rest.”

“If I were to tell you,” The sorcerer whispered back, “You’d have to be the sort of man who would do that for me in any case.”

Arthur looked down at it expectantly, but the creature only gave a hacking laugh. It glanced at Arthur quickly, almost flirtatiously and Arthur, feeling very self-conscious, bent down to hear its response.

“ _If_ , your highness. _If_ I were to tell you.” It grinned stupidly. “I won’t, you see.”

Arthur slammed one hand against the floor near the creature’s head, and Sir Dinall cleared his throat nervously. Dinall gestured at the creature’s bruised genitals, and Arthur felt a white-hot rage go through him, anger at the sorcerer and Dinall and Ugeme and Morgana and every member of the court who stared with savage curiosity at the scene before them.

“I’m using him tonight,” Arthur said. “In my chambers.” He signaled to the guards to undo the sorcerer’s chain, but Uther stopped them with a hand.

Arthur clenched his jaw. “I am crown prince of Camelot, am I not?” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I do not put on a show for my subjects.”

The creature laughed again. Morgana pushed her food away in disgust, but Uther nodded his permission. Lady Ugeme made a strangled noise as the guards carried it away, but Arthur silenced her with a glare.

\--

The guards dumped the sorcerer just inside his door, and it slumped there, breathing heavily.

“Still not going to tell you,” it said.

Arthur folded his arms. “And if I make you?”

“Can’t,” the creature mumbled. “Try, if you want.”

Then it was silent, and Arthur felt foolish. He could see the outline of its ribs and its dirty, skinny thighs smeared with come. Arthur didn’t want to harm it. He didn’t even want to look at it.

Arthur slid his hands under its shoulders and lifted it up. It didn’t weigh very much, but, then, Arthur hadn’t expected it to. He brought it to the bed, grimacing at the realization that its grimy body was making contact with his clean sheets.

Arthur locked the door to his chambers as an afterthought.

When he returned to his bed, the creature hadn’t moved, but it was smiling. Arthur examined it, spread out before him, and noted the soft puffiness on his chest, breasts so small as to be nearly nonexistent. He ghosted a hand over the soft, bruised penis, and the creature sighed.

“Go ahead,” it said, though Arthur hardly needed permission. He gingerly lifted its cock aside. Its slit was red, the lips swollen and puffy, and Arthur caught sight of something wedged inside.

“What…?”

“Ugeme’s,” the sorcerer said. “She has quite the collection.” Arthur slid two fingers and a thumb inside more easily than he would have thought possible. The sorcerer was loose and slick with fluids, and Arthur was able to remove a thick silver phallus. The creature only sighed again, once, and more come dripped slowly out from its slit.

Arthur strode to the fire, dropping the phallus in the grate. He did not, upon reflection, like Ugeme very much. Or Dinall, for that matter. There were very few people at court he was close to, which was fitting for the sole heir to the throne, but he rarely bothered to openly detest many of them. Something about the unnatural, feather-light creature lying on his sheets made him want to reconsider.

Arthur shook his head, and decided to wrap the sorcerer in his now-ruined coverlet.

“You may rest,” he said, “And you don’t really have to tell me your name.”

 “I really wasn’t going to,” the creature said, nodding easily.

Arthur huffed. It was more of an annoyance than it was worth. “I asked for the Lady Morgana.” He paused. “We were close, once, but things have come between us. Things rather like you, for example.”

The creature cracked one eye open. “You can call me Tiresias, if you like.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow. It had a sense of humor, apparently.

“That probably isn’t my name,” the creature continued, “But I think I’ve seen you, in the future.” It yawned. “I thought I was going mad here, at first, but Morgana’s seen it too.”

Arthur slid his boots off and sat on the other end of the bed. “I’m going to sleep now, Tiresias, so keep the prophecy to a minimum.”

“She doesn’t want to believe me,” the sorcerer said drowsily. “But it is you I saw…”

Arthur ignored it, and stole back his pillow. It was definitely mad.

\--

“It isn’t really named Tiresias, is it?” Arthur asked Morgana the next morning, after the creature had been returned to the stocks.

Morgana gave him a withering glare. “ _He_ isn’t really named Tiresias. He.”

Arthur stared at her, at the circles underneath her eyes and the deadened rage in her expression. Guinevere hovered in the periphery of his vision, nearly-invisible in the way all servants were, but made more real, more noticeable because she was the servant Morgana loved.

“He claims you’ve seen the future,” Arthur said carefully. “I think he’s going mad.”

Morgana snorted, unladylike. “I can hardly see why that would be surprising, Arthur.”

\--

Arthur stopped by the stocks before training. He glowered at the peasants flinging rotted fruit until they dispersed, and then he asked, “You’re a ‘he,’ are you? Not, you know…”

The creature, or young man, Arthur supposed, shook his head. “Not ‘she.’ My mum thought it would be better if she just said I was a boy. Always gone around as boy, my whole life. Though it hardly matters now that anyone can see I’m both.”

Arthur felt ridiculous for a moment, standing before a naked boy (with some abnormal additions), discussing his mum. His mum. No one had ever told him that sorcerers, vile and unnatural, would refer to the women who spawned them in so mundane a fashion.

Arthur tried for a light tone. “I see, Tiresias. So I can cross all female names off the list?”

The creature groaned. “You _are_ a prat,” he said.

“I could punish you for that,” Arthur said.

“I’m already stark naked in the stocks, and I’ve been fucked eight or nine times today. Twice in the arse. Sir Clodran will be by later to fuck my mouth. He likes to make me gag. Please, go ahead, make it worse. You’re going to have to be creative.”

Arthur shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t do sloppy seconds,” he snapped. “Nor sloppy tenths, for that matter.”

Uther called for him soon after, and reprimanded him for keeping the peasants from their fruit-slinging.

“There will be punishment, Arthur,” the king said. “You cannot undermine my authority in this fashion. The sorcerer must suffer for its crimes. Which one of your men will receive your sentence this time?”

Arthur stood very straight, and for once did not feel shame at the laws that shifted penalties from the shoulders of the heir apparent to the backs of his men. He chose Clodran.

Uther allowed some gentlewomen to choose a punishment involving vinegar, and Arthur was sure it was horrible, but he didn’t particularly care. He allowed himself to believe, when they brought the sorcerer inside at the end of the day, that it – _he_ — didn’t look nearly as awful as he usually did after a day in the stocks.

\--

Lady Enna sent one of the cooks to be hung by his wrists in the oubliette. The man had not properly sweetened her milk.

“What is his specialty?” Arthur asked, having overheard the tale from Guinevere and another servant who were polishing floors near his chambers. “The cook. Does he excel at preparing anything?”

The other servant was small and blonde and familiar-yet-unknown, which was common for her set. She looked to Guinevere nervously.

Guinevere’s eyes flickered to Arthur’s face, almost too quickly to catch his notice. He should have been offended, but he let her gaze pass.

“He is the only one in the kitchens who can prepare an eel, my lord.”

Arthur detested eel, but he demanded that the servants fetch him a platter of eel immediately.

\--

Arthur could not be seen favoring the sorcerer, obviously, but there were other things he could do. He could gift the boy to his kinder men – Geraint, who was well-endowed but gentle, or Leon, who took some care for the boy’s pleasure, all the while glancing at his lord in disgust and disbelief. He could invent games that hurt less: suggest that the knights bathe the sorcerer’s face in semen instead of forcing their sinewy arms into his holes. He could demand to see the creature displayed at suppertime, instead of tucked under the banquet table to service some lord.

He still did not like to look at the creature, but Arthur found that there were fewer people he liked to look at in any case. It was hard to see nobility in the lords who would dump their fetid leftovers over the sorcerer’s head, and the ladies who would force him to lick the food from the floor, competing with the dogs for scraps. Harder still to see nobility in the king, who allowed such behavior to go unchecked.

When Uther dismissed Arthur for patrol each morning, Arthur could not look directly at him. He was in two minds. There was relief first, relief at the wide, free countryside, and the simplicity of defending his people from brigands and criminals. There was also unease, a foreboding that Uther and the court would go too far, and Arthur would return to find the sorceror’s battered corpse at the foot of the dung heap.

Arthur did not avert his eyes out of any respect for the king.

\--

When a suitable amount of time had passed, two weeks of studiously ignoring the sorcerer’s role in Camelot’s nighttime revels, Arthur again demanded private use. Lady Cilla tutted at his selfishness, but Uther hardly seemed to care.

Arthur had a servant girl bathe him beforehand, though he could hardly bring himself to use her, his appetite for these things now dispersed. Arthur instructed his men to dump the sorcerer in the bathwater as soon as he arrived. His head sank underneath too easily, but neither Arthur nor his knights bothered to help.

“I won’t have his filth cluttering my sheets again,” Arthur said, but he rushed to lift the dark head above the water as soon as they were alone. He found the soap and scrubbed too roughly, the way he had seen servants polish his armour, until the water was black with grime. The sorcerer made no objections, except when Arthur paused at his genitals. Then he reached for the soap, held it in one shaking, manacled hand, and cautiously rubbed at his cock and coarse black pubic hair. He tentatively splashed at his two loose openings until Arthur stopped him with one firm hand because the water was filthy, and he was sure that they’d done what they could.

He was a great deal cleaner than he’d been in weeks once Arthur had dried him and laid him beneath the coverlet. His skin was still raw from time spent in the sun, but he was paler in places, along the underside of his hollowed stomach and underneath the light sprinkling of hair on his jaw and upper lip. The sorcerer did not seem to grow a beard, only the kind of dusky trail that certain court ladies elected to remove with wax. It was dark, like his eyelashes, and the way those lashes contrasted with the sorcerer’s clear blue eyes made Arthur feel a sick kind of want. Arthur ignored it, disgusted with himself.

“I met a druid once,” the sorcerer said. “He called me Emrys.”

“Is that your name?” Arthur said, and he wasn’t surprised when the former Tiresias shook his head.

“That’s the one I gave Lady Morgana.” Emrys smiled briefly. “So there you have it. You win after all. Another name for another kindness.”

“I want your real name,” Arthur said, though he wasn’t sure that he did. He wanted to see the sorcerer rest, just for tonight, safe and away from the rest of the court.

“Ah.” Emrys waited until Arthur was laid out next to him, and then curled hesitantly into the bend of Arthur’s arm. “I think your father had him killed. The druid, I mean.”

Arthur did not want to think about that. He rested his hand in the small of the sorcerer’s back, and slept.

\--

Sir Persivant and Lord Trall cornered three servants in an antechamber and presented them with collars, sniggering. One was Guinevere, though Arthur could not fathom what she was doing so far from Morgana’s chambers. Arthur pulled the men away, set them to training until nightfall, and avoided Guinevere’s assessing gaze.

He did not mention it to Morgana. Morgana had nothing to do with it.

\--

Emrys watched him sometimes, while being fucked or flogged or humiliated before the court. He did not watch for long; he was not so very stupid after all.

Sometimes the sorcerer would beg piteously for water from his place in the stocks, and, when Arthur approached, Emrys would tell him how Mellurion had bragged to Dinall about forcing a steward’s young son, or how Madoigne had consigned an elderly serving woman to the ducking stool. Emrys wanted him to care. Arthur was not pleased to discover that he did care, but what was he to do, after the fact?

\--

When Arthur did not prevent Clodran from lifting a servant girl’s skirt at supper, Emrys crawled to him and begged to lick his boots. The assembled company roared with laughter. Clodran stopped his pawing to egg him on. Uther looked on proudly. Arthur felt sick.

The girl escaped.

Later, after he had declared he would reward the sorcerer with another private session, Arthur threw Emrys on his bed once more and refused to look at him.

“I have not touched you,” Arthur said with teeth clenched, furious. “I have not tormented you. I have, in fact, defended you and offered you respite. I will thank you not to force my hand in any way. Is that clear?”

“My name,” the sorcerer began.

“ _I do not care_ ,” Arthur said. “You will not…you cannot sacrifice yourself for a serving girl. And I will not have my dignity sacrificed for one, either.”

Emrys buried his face in the coverlet.

”Then I’m wrong, and you aren’t who I thought you might become.”

It was gibberish, or madness. Arthur pretended he hadn’t heard. 


End file.
